Civil Aviation Bill

Baroness Worthington Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Worthington]

4: Clause 1, page 2, line 10, at end insert—
“( ) the need to ensure that the holder of a licence under this Chapter complies with applicable planning laws,”

[Baroness Worthington]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 4, I will speak also speak to Amendments 6, 7, 13A and 69, which have been grouped under the title of environmental amendments. I seek to reinstate environmental duties into the Bill. These amendments are not new and were tabled in the Commons. We have received some responses from the Government that have quite frankly been disappointing. The Bill, as noble Lords will know, started out under the previous Government. When we issued our consultation document in 2009 and our decisions document in December of that year, we made very clear that we intended to use such a Bill to introduce an environmental duty on the CAA.

It was, therefore, with great regret that we noticed that the current Bill does not contain such a duty. We understand that the Minister in the Commons Committee has given reasons why she believes that it should not be included, although it is rather odd for the so-called greenest Government ever to renege on or move away from environmental commitments. We would have thought that they would take every opportunity possible to introduce these duties, so it seems a little odd and the reasons given are not convincing.

The first reason given is that a primarily economic regulatory Bill is simply not the place to put environmental regulations. To that, I simply say that there are obvious precedents for creating environmental duties within economic regulatory instruments. Other bodies that have an impact on the environment such as the ORR, Ofgem, Ofgas and Ofwat all have secondary duties to take into account environmental concerns and sustainable development. As an example I will read the duty put on Ofgas, which has a duty to,

“have regard … to the effect on the environment of activities connected with the conveyance of gas through pipes … and to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development”.

It is, obviously, primarily an economic regulator, but it has, nevertheless, an environmental duty, because it is an activity that brings with it environmental issues. I do not see, therefore, that that reason holds, and it would be very good to hear from the Minister on whether the Government accept that there is no real difference between the CAA and other economic regulators, and to get an explanation of why it cannot also have an environmental duty.

The other reason given in response to some of these amendments might be that they apply only to the dominant airports. That is why we have included Amendment 69, which will come later, ahead of Clause 100, to give a general duty. We agree that it should not just be a matter for the dominant airports, but should be across the industry.

Yet another reason given for not accepting these amendments is that they are simply not needed. In fact, there are many people who disagree with that. When we were in government, we did not agree; as I have stated, we made it clear that we would put such duties into the Bill. Also, the Department for Transport’s press release of November 2011 did not seem to agree either. That—rather erroneously, as it turns out—stated that such a duty would be included, so it seemed odd that when the draft Bill was published it did not contain these environmental duties. Most recently, in January 2012 the Transport Committee made it clear that it also believed that it should be included. It stated:

“Without giving the CAA a supplementary duty on the environment in relation to its economic regulation role, there is some risk that airports may be reluctant to invest in improving environmental performance. Whilst, as the Minister says, there may be ‘absolutely no doubt’ about measures taken to comply with statutory environmental obligations, there remains a doubt about whether the costs of discretionary measures, such as improved public transport access, can be recovered by airports in charges to airlines”.

The crucial point is that we need to take discretionary spending into account here. There will be examples—civil groups such as Airport Watch have provided them—where airports may want to undertake voluntary measures to improve their environmental performance, but will seek to recover those costs. We need to maintain the CAA’s flexibility to allow them to do this. It is a very important point. We do not want to see a race to the bottom through cost-cutting at the expense of environmental measures. It is, therefore, important that these duties are established and, as I said, many people agree with us on this.

I turn now to Amendment 6, which relates not to the broader environmental duty to have regard to the environment, but is more specifically to do with carbon budgets. In this debate about aviation we cannot ignore the fact that this sector has a considerable environmental impact, that climate change is a real problem, and that there is cross-party consensus that we need to tackle it. So it is clearly important that we enlist all those sectors that contribute to our carbon budget to help in reducing it. It is absolutely imperative that we follow the advice of the Committee on Climate Change on including aviation in our carbon budgets. Having done that, we then need an industry and regulatory body that has environmental concerns and the meeting of those carbon budgets at its heart.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Attlee]

The noble Lord makes a very good point, and I am sure that my officials will not let me go too far. However, I am willing to consider Amendments 5, 7 and 13A in greater detail, with a view to returning to the matter on Report. I would find further meetings with noble Lords extremely valuable.

While I appreciate the spirit in which noble Lords have proposed these amendments today, as I have said, there are a few reasons why I am hesitant to accept them now. Interested parties have made it clear that the CAA should not be the environmental regulator. If such duties were to be imposed, I also believe it would be desirable to specify some or all of the environmental effects to which the CAA must have regard. With the assurance that I will consider this matter in detail ahead of Report, I hope that the noble Baroness and other noble Lords will be able to withdraw and not to press their amendments.

[Baroness Worthington]

I thank the Minister for his comments. I am encouraged that he anticipates that I will not be disappointed and that he will consider further a number of the amendments. I come back to a few of the things that he mentioned. It would seem odd not to introduce such a duty because it would apply to only 55% of the market and not 100%. Clearly, 55% is better than nothing. I know that he will say that it is about competitive distortions, but let us be honest—I think that the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, made this clear—those three airports have a distinct advantage over the others in terms of scale. They are off the scale in comparison to the other airports. There are many other environmental regulations that have this differentiation between the smaller and larger, dominant operators. There are often lots of de minimis thresholds put into regulations to account for the difference in scale. I really do not see that as a problem, and I urge the Government to go through with the 55% if they are very keen on environmental issues, which they say they are.

I wonder—and this may be something that we can meet about—whether Amendment 69 does not help to address this question by creating a more general duty that would cover all of the CAA’s operations. I can understand the question of how CAA would operationalise it, given that it does not license the other operators, but I am sure that it is not beyond our wit to be able to work through that.

The Minister talked about planning and said that he could not understand what it would be used for. I echo the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, in saying that we are trying to prevent a legal challenge and to give the CAA cover if it chooses to apply its discretion and include discretionary spending within the regulated asset base. So it would be used as a defensive measure against being forced not to include environmental measures. There are other things that relate specifically to planning. Often planning approvals include Section 106 agreements—additional obligations to which a developer voluntarily agrees. So they might not be caught within a very strict interpretation of the law, because they are very often quite loosely worded. So there are some questions there about planning.

I pay tribute to my noble friends and other noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. It has been a good debate and I am very encouraged. We all recognise, as my noble friends Lord Clinton-Davis, Lord Soley and Lady McIntosh have accepted, that the aviation industry should not be singled out for not embracing the environment. It clearly does move forward on a voluntary basis. That is exactly what we are trying to say here: we want to enable and allow this voluntary move towards a more efficient, cleaner and more environmentally responsible industry. We do not want this Bill to stop that. That is a very important point. We are not saying the sector does not wish to move. I am sure it does, given all the pressures that it is under.

My noble friend Lord Berkeley raised the point, which we have made before, that other sectors are regulated with environmental duties. He specifically mentioned rail as an example. Rail often competes directly with the aviation sector when it comes to short-haul flights and it seems odd that rail should have an environmental duty but aviation not. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, raised some very important points about other elements of the Bill, in particular Clause 84 and how that relates to the duties that we hope will be created. My noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis talked about the fact that the aircraft and aviation industry wish to respond. I hope I have captured most of the contributions and I thank the noble Earl for his encouraging words. I look forward to something being brought forward by the Government and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 4 withdrawn.